


Carving Stones

by Venutian



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Fear Play, Gen, Gender Neutral, Giant/Tiny, Macro/Micro, POV Second Person, Shrinking, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22594432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venutian/pseuds/Venutian
Summary: Teselecta!Reader vore fic.Gender non-specific. No use of '(Y/N)'Stranded in an empty room without your ship, your chances of survival seem bleak. Your death is inevitable, unless you can get help.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	Carving Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place sometime between 6x13 (Closing Time) and 6x14 (The Wedding of River Song)
> 
> I had the idea for this January of last year and wrote the first draft throughout that May. And it’s taken me almost a year to polish it up. I don’t know why it was so difficult, but now that I’ve read it and agonized over it so many times, I have no idea what it really says anymore haha. Oh well. Glad to have it out in the world now. Enjoy!~

You are a member of the Teselecta. Just a miniaturized crew member serving inside a person-shaped ship, carrying out your duties as the ship tracked down criminals on various worlds throughout various histories. You work for the external maintenance crew, which means you’re responsible for the upkeep of the outside of the ship, both in its natural form and while it is disguised. The rest of the crew relies on your team to keep everything in pristine order. Honestly though, you’re more of a glorified window cleaner than anything else. Every couple of days your team repels down the ship’s exterior to make sure everything is clean and in running order. It’d be easier to de-miniaturize to do this, but the regular-sized eye can’t always detect problems, and anyways the frequent de-miniaturization would put a lot of strain on the team’s bodies. 

The most recent maintenance cycle had been nothing extraordinary, at least to begin with. The ship had been parked in an empty room and, since the room was relatively secluded, had deactivated the disguise so that you and your teammates could inspect the base structure. There were only minimal imperfections to the metal exterior, and those imperfections had been easy to fix. The mood had been relaxed, jovial almost, and you’d been joking around with your crewmates when the ship had received a call to action. You had been so distracted with work and coworkers that you hadn’t heard it. 

While talking, you’d seen a spot of dirty residue a little lower down the ship exterior. Feeling motivated, you had gone ahead of your crewmates, lowering yourself down the line with your cleaning supplies in tow. You had just reached the smudge when the entire ship had started shaking and you realized too late that it was powering on. Surprised, you’d hesitated. You had looked up to see your crewmates furiously scrambling towards the access point on the ship’s shoulder and realized that you’d missed a recall order. Before you could climb up to join them, the ship shook again, rougher that time. Your body had been thrown away from the ship and then, because you were still attached to the line, had come slamming back into it. Your cleaning supplies had been knocked loose and through your dazed stupor, you’d watched them fade from view, the impact of them hitting the floor inaudible—due to both the distance and their small scale. It had not been a welcome reminder of your situation.

Your crewmates had disappeared into the ship, and in their haste, they probably hadn’t even done a headcount. They might not have even noticed you weren’t right behind them. That was what you had forced yourself to believe, because the alternatives—that their own instincts of self-preservation had overridden team safety protocols or even that you’d been purposefully abandoned—weren’t the positive thinking that you had needed at the time. In any case, there had been no reason for you to panic. There was an emergency recall setting on your external maintenance suit that could get you up to the access point in only a few seconds. 

You had pushed the recall button full of confidence and already preparing some harsh words for the people waiting on the other side of the access door. You’d been gaining speed when the ship had given one full-bodied shudder and the disguise had snapped into view, skin and clothes appearing where metal had been before. The disguise had phased through the safety line, severing your connection to the ship. Your momentum had continued to carry you upward, but it hadn’t been enough to get you to the access point. For a moment you floated at the top of the arc, and everything had been perfectly still. The room, the ship, you. And then a bird had flown across the window of that empty room, the shadow of which falling over you, dark wings spread almost as if it were mocking you. 

You had shortly thereafter found yourself falling, colors around you turning to grey, your breathing uncomfortably loud in the helmet that you had worn. You had known—perhaps prayed, perhaps only assumed—that the maintenance suit would break your fall; it was designed with shock absorption capabilities to protect miniaturized bodies. It must have gone through extensive testing when it was built, but there were no recorded instances of it actually being used. Falling off or out of the ship was actually very rare and when it did happen, it was with rookies at port, not out in the field. So truly, the suits were designed to break your fall, but whether it actually would do so… that was just a matter of faith. 

The ground had gotten closer fast, faster than you could even process. The impact had knocked you out. You didn’t even remember hitting the ground. 

When you had woken up you’d heard a soft hissing noise, and as you’d laid there oozing back into your body you had listened to it growing more and more faint. It was dark, and as your mind seemed to be re-calibrating, you realized you’d landed face-down. You’d seen the massive crack across the front of your helmet when you’d rolled over, and you wrapped around the fact that the hissing meant that pressure inside had slowly leaked out. It had adjusted you to the outside conditions, so the helmet had become useless. You’d sat up, pried the broken helmet off, and deposited it beside you. The new air had made your maintenance suit feel hot, suffocating, and you were quick to shed it, peeling away the fabric as quickly as your woozy head would allow. But then, getting to your bare feet in your undershirt and just a pair of shorts, you’d realized how exposed you were without the suit, and it’d felt like you’d just removed your skin. You’d never been outside without a suit while miniaturized. It just wasn’t done.

While you’d been unconscious, the Teselecta had left the room. It had gone on to perform whatever mission had been requested of it, leaving you behind. There was a tracker imbedded in your discarded suit, but it was only short-range, meant to tell the interior crew your position on the exterior during your maintenance routine. It was never intended to be used to find a lost member. There’s no such thing as lost members.

There is one thought that overpowers all others, knocks down anything that starts to creep up instead. You are alone. Your crew isn’t coming for you; they probably aren’t even looking for you. Anyone missing from duty is presumed to be dead; sometimes the antibodies go after crew without anyone else noticing. And then there’s the other urgent thing: you are not only alone, but you are also dying. You can breathe for now, but that won’t last long. The oxygen molecules are too far apart in this air to sustain your small body for long and being out of the compression field will slowly tear your own molecules apart. Already your chest is heaving from having to process air that was never meant for you, breaths coming shorter than they should. This is the first symptom of compression sickness and it’s come quicker than you’d expected. 

A device around your wrist has enough power to create a temporary compression field, designed to be used in the event of an emergency. However, you need a confined space for it to work, such as an escape pod or even a small box, and you can’t see any of that nearby. The only thing you can do now is to find a good place to die. And it did have to be a _good_ place, because if civilians were to find evidence of the Teselecta, it could end in disaster. That’s what you’d been taught, anyways. No evidence of your presence was to be left behind, no matter of the circumstances. So that’s what you are to do: find a nice, hidden place and wait to be suffocated. The idea of your own death still seems so foreign, like it is a scenario drill back at the academy. This can’t be reality. Surely, at any minute, your instructors will pop out of their hidden observation spots, clipboards in hand, and grade your performance. 

Your eyes sweep the room, or what you can see of it from your reduced position on the floor. There aren’t many options for hiding, as the room is devoid of furniture. Is there anywhere that nobody would think to look? If you can find a way into a wall, perhaps a loose electrical socket- 

The sound of the doorknob rattling breaks you out of your grim thoughts and you turn around just in time to see the door swing open. You recognize the person behind it in an instant; it’s that man they call the Doctor. A thrill runs through your system, both at the sway of his reputation and the realization that he might be the only person on the current planet who would have any idea what you are or what to do with you.

His eyes sweep the room and he stands there for a moment in the doorway, hand still on the knob. He doesn’t see you, doesn’t seem to see anything of interest as his shoulders slump and he lets out a heavy breath. You have a decision to make. You can continue on with your meager plan of finding somewhere to die. You can worm your way into a crack in the wall and let yourself die alone, forgotten by the universe and turned to dust in the foundation of a building that you don’t even know the name of. Or. OR. You can die in the hands of a benevolent titan. He is dying too, you remember. He’d died once—at least, once in the presence of the Teselecta—and now he’s dying again. So maybe the two of you do have something in common. Maybe he would be able to see your plight, would give you a hand although you have little to offer in return. Maybe he would be kind.

You pick up the broken helmet near your feet, thumbs running over the cracked glass. Maybe he would not be so kind. Maybe, by attracting his attention, you would be choosing to have your last moments be loud and dramatic, rather than the silent but lonely agony of a hidden demise. You have to take the chance that he can help. If not for any other reason than there not being a great place to run off to. You throw your helmet towards him, knowing it will land much short of the Doctor but hoping that the noise and the movement will catch his attention. When the helmet bounces against the floor, his head snaps in your direction and you think he must have very good hearing to pinpoint it like that. 

It takes the Doctor only a few seconds more to see you, his eyes following the reverse path of the rolling helmet. You have to tilt your head almost all the way to see his face and you can see the discovery play out on it, his confusion slowly melting into recognition. He starts walking towards you, each thundering step rattling your bones as it does the ground beneath you. His boots are big, so big, easily able to crush you if he isn’t careful. But despite his size, his moves are calculated, controlled. He comes to a stop a couple of paces away from you, hesitating now, and you are so close now that you can’t see his face at all. 

He crouches before you, the fabric of his pants rustling audibly as they shift around his legs. The leather of his boots squeak as his weight shifts, pulling against the stitching, rubbing against the ground. Now that he’s gotten lower you can see his face again, and for a moment all you can do is stare up into it. Waiting, watching. His expression is unreadable but there is no doubt he’s watching you too. You can see his jaw working, the wheels spinning inside his head, and you feel then just how vulnerable you are without the suit, without any form of protection. It’s just you and him now.

“Oh, you are tiny.” He coos, breaking the wordless captivation between the two of you. He sounds fascinated by you. That’s dangerous, perhaps the most blood-curdling response because many good people had done terrible things for the sake of _curiosity_. “Did you come from the Teselecta?” All you can do is nod, your tongue heavy from the fear and apprehension. What is one supposed to say at a time like this? Is it polite to introduce yourself, or to just get down to business? The Doctor doesn’t say anything to acknowledge you and you realize then that it’s possible he didn’t notice the gesture. You are about to say something when movement catches your eye.

It’s the Doctor’s hand. He reaches down, and before you can tell him not to, he wraps his lanky fingers around your right ankle. You are almost surprised at the ease with which he can do this; you are only the height of a link of his finger and yet he seems to be able to pick out your details without uncertainty. The Doctor pulls your legs right out from under you with a quickness you haven’t come to expect from a full-sized person. The back of your head briefly makes contact with the floor as you are lifted away and you scarcely have time to cry out in pain before suddenly, you are very, very high above that floor. Your stomach does flips and there is a strong sense of vertigo, a buzzing in your mind that is not just due to the recent blow. 

He’s lifted you to the height of his face but is holding you with your back to him. His eyes burn into you, his head slowly tilting so that he can get a better look at you. Your arms dangle limply over your head and though you try to twist around to look at him, you don’t dare thrash. It’s a long fall to the floor, and without the suit it’s a height that would easily kill you. You don’t know why he’s picked you up but since you are at his mercy, it probably isn’t wise to ask. 

“So very small.” He says to himself, echoing his previous sentiments. The Doctor’s wrist carefully rotates, and you are slowly allowed to face him. You are being held a distance from his face, up and away from it like he isn’t sure what exactly to make of you, and with the way he squints, you wonder if he is long-sighted. Thinking about his eyes only draws you to look into them, although it doesn’t do much to reassure you. They are intense in a way that is not necessarily friendly, shadowed, his intentions hidden somewhere within them. 

The Doctor rolls your ankle between his thumb and forefinger, causing you to swing through the air. Your ankle burns and throbs as it is forced to hold and spin your entire body weight. Assuming this is him at his most gentle, you would fear to know him otherwise. But then, there is nothing there to assume he is being careful. Either way, it is painful in a way that seems irrelevant; the pain is a reminder that you are still being held and not plummeting to your death, and so perhaps it is a small price to pay. Your ankle is the least of your health concerns at the moment anyways. His lips pull up into a smile, and he looks amused, either with your stature or with your helpless plight. With one sweep of his wrist you pass by his mouth and an involuntary shudder runs through your spine. 

You insist that he put you down, although you can’t sound very intimidating to him, small and voice straining. As you force the words out, your head throbs from the blood rush. Being upside down is not all that fun, as it turns out. And the hanging position certainly isn’t helping you to breathe any easier. He watches you for a minute, that amused expression still irritatingly on his face.

“Speak up, dear, you’re really much too quiet.” The Doctor finally counters, almost dares. You swallow and try again, as loud as you can manage, but he just smiles at you without answering. Feigning deafness, perhaps. He must be faking it, pretending not to hear you just to watch you squirm. Toying with you. 

You are a sinner at the hands of a vengeful god, a spider dangling over an open flame. You can die with the flick of his wrist, a twitch of his fingers, be snuffed out by a floating whim of a stranger. A dying man has little to lose, little to care. There are few consequences he is afraid of, few that he can even conceive. Especially from the likes of you. It does not seem like he has any interest in helping you. You were wrong to have sought him out and now you will have to pay the consequences, whatever that might be.

“What am I going to do with you?” He asks. He can’t be truly asking you, not if he’s still pretending you’re too small. And yet, despite his careless actions, his words are free of malice. Actually, there may have even been a hint of concern. Your neck hurts from trying to see him and you let yourself go fully limp, eyes coming to a rest somewhere just below his chin. “You can’t have come here alone.” The Doctor’s Adam’s apple bobs as he speaks and you watch it for a moment, tuning out his babble. There isn’t any point in trying to answer, as he seems happy to ignore you. It isn’t long before his words trail off and the man sighs once, his expression dulling.

After one last long look, he lowers you back down to the floor, apparently having grown bored of you. The Doctor releases you onto your back, letting go of your ankle once you are close to the ground. Immediately the pressure in your head begins to die down but the fuzzy feeling doesn’t go away completely. You lie there for a minute, dazed, wondering how long you can stay like that before it becomes socially unacceptable. It is tempting to just close your eyes, to fall asleep there, perhaps die there, but then that seems a bit rude. You have to at least finish this encounter, send him on his way so that you can resume your hunt for a hiding place.

And so you force yourself to stand up, gingerly trying not to place weight on your now-sore ankle. Standing does little to close the gap between your face and his. Without you noticing, he’d sunk down to a cross-legged seated position. Even so he towers over you, his shadow easily swallowing up your form. You had thought you’d felt small when he’d been standing but that had been a comparison too extreme for your brain to handle. Now that he is hunched into himself, as small as he would ever be, your mind finally process the difference and you force yourself to look away. You must look so very tiny to him, so impossibly, helplessly small. 

Now that you are grounded and the room is quiet, the air rattles audibly through your throat and your chest is painfully tight, heavy like it is full of water. Suffocating isn’t the worst way to die. It isn’t honorable, it isn’t the quickest, but it surely isn’t the most painful. You can at least revel in that. You cough to try to clear this uncomfortable feeling and it causes the spit in your mouth to take on a dull, metallic taste. A permanent lightheadedness has settled over your mind and you can practically see the particles in the air, the stars flying around the edges of your eyes, comets ushering you into the black unknown. It won’t be much longer now. 

“Are you alright?” The Doctor finally asks, breaking his silence. You turn back to face him, trying once again to cough the tightness out of your chest. “I’m sorry if I spun you around too much. Couldn’t resist.” He doesn’t sound very sorry. 

“It’s not that.” You manage to say, “It’s the-”

“Oh, the compression field! Right!” It’s unclear whether he is still ignoring you or if he’s figured it out on his own. “You’re destabilizing.” Well, that’s one way to put it. You have nothing to add and he continues to look down at you. His hands slowly move from his lap to the floor, coming to rest not far from where you’re standing. He’s somehow managed to hunker down even further towards you, leaning down to address you in a softer tone. “You’re… dying.” 

It is true of course, but hearing it out loud has a different sort of impact than just thinking about it, and it’s like he’s plastering the label across your forehead. Marking you for the reaper, carving your stone. Has he just realized it? How differently would the interaction have gone if he’d known this from the start? Would he have been more compassionate? Or would he simply have cast you away, a lost cause already, not worth his time? 

“The Teselecta are helping me on a, eh, _personal project_ , so it’d be unfair for me not to offer the same.” You both know that your people aren’t helping him out of the goodness of your Captain’s heart. The Teselecta doesn’t do ‘personal projects’. Perhaps by helping you, he would be easing some of his own guilt. “Tell me what I can do.”

It’s unprecedented, that a man such as this would ask orders from someone such as you. Even if you were de-miniaturized, he would tower above you—not just in height but also in reputation, in prestige. He has the dazzling confidence of someone with too much power wrapped around their hands, making pools of with every footstep from which the common folk would lap. Not a god but rather a sun, shining light upon those who needed help and zapping the fleas who called themselves opponents. The Teselecta has punished people like that before. Smiles like honey, as they were usually described. The most dangerous, the most unpredictable, and yet the most beneficial to have on your side. Today his pledge of assistance is wasted; there is nothing the Doctor can possibly offer, especially with as little time left as you have. He doesn’t look so discouraged. 

“Is that an emergency compression system?” He asks, raising one hand and pointing a finger towards the device locked onto your wrist. You nod, unable to tear your eyes from his face. “Why haven’t you activated it yet?” If only it were that simple. You explain that the room is too big for compression, that your device isn’t strong enough. “Can’t you use something smaller? A jar? Hold on, I know I’ve got one…” He begins to fish vigorously around his jacket pocket, “Well I could’ve sworn…” He pats around his entire body, double-checking spots he’d already searched. “Come to think of it, I may have used it to collect some Alorian slime. But! Don’t worry, I can use my hands.” He offers them out as he says it, cupping them in front of you. 

That’s too unreliable, way too unreliable. You shake your head, explaining that if his fingers were to slip apart while the device was active, he’d blow out the entire field and then there’d be nothing else to save you. You probably wouldn’t even survive the rapid decompression. It would only take a finger out of place, a sweaty slip of the palms, and poof—you’d be gone. It’d be like a hole in the side of a spaceship, you probably wouldn’t even know what hit you. Perhaps the thought of a quick death like that tempts you. But something like that had never been done, never been tested, and you have no idea if it would blow his hands off along with it, and that isn’t a risk that you are willing to take. Nobody else needs to get hurt because of your mistake.

“Alright. Plan C it is then. You’re going to _love_ this.” 

He scruffs you without further talk, picking you up by the back of your undershirt and lifting you into the air. It’s better than being suspended by your ankle but that isn’t saying much; the way the fabric bunches around your armpits is far from comfortable and it’s exposed a strip of the skin around your waistband. Despite this, his touch comes with an unexpected gentleness, a level of care that had not been there before. It’s like some sort of switch has been flipped within him, this an entirely different man than the one whose hands had callously flung you just minutes ago. The ground gets further and further away from your bare feet, air whooshing past you. Something about the Doctor’s expression gives the impression that you won’t be seeing that ground again. 

You start to ask what he is doing, but your tongue turns to mush when it registers how close you are to his face, having been brought to about his nose level. He has to go sort of cross-eyed to keep his gaze on you, and it raises the question of why he hadn’t lifted you just a bit higher. You can’t bring yourself to ask it. 

“You’re going to feel right at home.” He isn’t explaining exactly what he is about to do, which means he probably doesn’t think you are going to like it. And yet, that confidence that he projects is a sort of reassurance. The Doctor knows what he is doing. His interactions with you thus far have been mischievous, sure, but not outright malicious. And what choice do you have—dangling there by nothing but his fingertips and the strength of your shirt—but to trust him? 

The Doctor opens his mouth and he opens it wide. For a moment he looks as though he’s about to say something, but then his hand moves, bringing you closer, and his tongue slips out, almost beneath you. It takes you just a moment too late to figure what he means to do. Your limbs fly out to catch onto something but there is nothing to grab, your stature so small and the space around you so empty, and even as you are brought right up to his lips you find yourself unable to latch onto anything. A quick gust of breath flies through you—a scoff, as if he is somehow entertained by your realization and subsequent panic. 

His wrist curls back and then snaps forward, causing you to swing by the fabric of your shirt, but he doesn’t let go. Your feet pass by his teeth and then are yanked out again. Maybe he is building up momentum, ready to launch you clean to the back of his throat, or maybe he is just toying with you again. The game doesn’t last long. The Doctor finally does release, sending you skidding into a damp, sticky darkness. You try to keep yourself upright but his tongue is too slick to catch your balance and you fall onto your stomach. Your face thumps against the wet muscle, the cool spit seeping through your hair and against your scalp.

Your eyes are still adjusting to the dim lighting when his tongue shifts beneath you, slinking back behind his teeth and pulling you further into the depths. The Doctor’s teeth shut with a distinct clack and his jaw moves, settling into place as the space around you becomes a lot less spacious. The only light that remains is that which filters in from between his teeth and even it fades as he closes his mouth entirely, leaving you fully enveloped in the darkness. You can hear your own raspy breathing along with the smooth grace of his, whispering ominously through the back of his throat. 

Lying there, slowly marinating in saliva is unpleasant and so you start to try to get up, ignoring the rough, slimy, and slightly springy texture of the Doctor’s tongue underneath your fingers. The liquid sticks to you as you pull your hand away from it, just viscous enough not to feel like water. Just as you start to get some leverage, his tongue moves again and you are roughly flattened against the roof of his mouth. You are splayed out, sandwiched between the living surfaces. You hear the deep rumble of his chuckle, perhaps entertained by your fruitless struggle, and his tongue flexes a little beneath you. Is he feeling you? Teasing you? _Tasting_ you?

Despite the slight increase in humidity, the air in the Doctor’s mouth is just as hard to breathe as it is outside and you wheeze, trying to draw in in it the best you can. The metallic taste hasn’t left your mouth and only becomes more prominent as you cough again. There isn’t enough air to satisfy the craving in your burning lungs. There are spots dancing on the side of your vision, yellow and white this time. You don’t have much time left. The only solace you have now is that it’s out of your hands, and there is a sort of freedom in not having to choose your fate. 

The Doctor hesitates as your chest continues to heave against his tongue and you can only wonder if he can feel those movements. If he can taste the traces of blood on your lips. If he knows how much it hurts, having your cells stretched and close to being ripped apart by gravitational forces. If he knows how close you really are to dying, held there in the square of his mouth. 

No further time is wasted. The Doctor swallows then, before you can even wrap your mind fully around your surroundings. You are sucked into his throat, his powerful muscles closing around you and plunging you deeper into his system. You offer no resistance even as the passage narrows and becomes uncomfortably tight and restrictive; it isn’t as if you can breathe anyways. The sensations surrounding the experience—the plush flesh squeezing your body, the thundering sounds of his innerworkings, even the cave-like darkness—are so foreign that you slide down in a numbed daze. 

When you are finally pushed into an empty space, you tumble limply to a heap at what must be the bottom of the Doctor’s stomach. The exhaustion from multiple ordeals is setting in, your limbs like boulders and your head pounding, eyelids heavy and lips tingling. This too must be an effect of the compression sickness, the lack of oxygen getting circulated to your extremities. And you can fix this by setting up the emergency compression field. By swallowing you, the Doctor has provided you with a closed space small enough to compress. 

Yes, you can activate the system now, and be spared. Or you could, if you could move. Your limbs refuse to follow directions and all you can do is lie there on your back, your life slipping away. It’s too late now. As if it isn’t bad enough that you are going to die, you are going to die at the bottom of what some may consider to be your enemy’s stomach. How pitiful. It’s a good thing the Teselecta aren’t coming back to find you; you’d be mortified to have them catch you like this. It’s better to let them think you suffocated peacefully. 

“Are you ok in there?” The Doctor’s voice is different now that you can hear it from the inside. The walls of his stomach have dampened the sound but even so it is rumbling, loud, _encompassing_. “Activate your compression field before I change my mind.” You should have thanked him for his effort beforehand. It is too late now; you can’t pull enough air in even to speak anymore. “Ok, I can do it remotely. I think.” Remotely? What-

There’s a buzzing sound, and then something on the device around your wrist clicks. The emergency compression field has been activated, without you even pushing the buttons. How is that possible? But you have neither the time nor the energy to question what has happened, as suddenly the space around you is pressurized. Your molecules snap rigidly back into place and air is forced down into your lungs. You can’t really breathe in these conditions either; the pressure is too harsh, too clear, too… _much_. The surface beneath you has become almost completely smooth, many of the wrinkles ironed out as it too is subjected to increased internal pressure. The walls shift around you then, squeezing in on itself. The Doctor belches once, releasing some of the pressure, and the action balances the area to an acceptable level of pressure for the both of you. You yawn, popping your ears. 

You roll onto your side, taking in deep breaths, the static feeling slowly fading from your mind, working its way through your chest and out through your extremities. You’d come so close to death, but you’ve somehow made it through. Even if the new air is a bit musty, it’s _breathable_ , and that’s all that matters. The pressure should also keep his body from being able to digest you, but that’s more of a secondary concern at the moment. And anyways, you doubt he would have gone through the effort of activating the compression field if he really intended on eating you. 

“That was a close one, wasn’t it?” 

All you can do is thank him in response, the gratitude seeping off you as you echo your sentiments over and then over again. You almost want to cry, want to laugh. You owe your life to him and the only thing he’s done is swallow you. The absurdity of it all is enough to make your already dizzy head spin again. 

“Are you alright?” He ignores your offers of thanks, and the way it rolls off him strike you that he’s someone accustomed to hearing it. 

The answer to his question isn’t a straightforward one. You are alright of course in the physical sense and that is how you answer his query, but the surrealism of your reality is throwing your mind a bit… off-kilter. You’ve been inside a ‘person’ before but that had been a disguise, a machine, and once you were inside the Teselecta it was easy to forget what it looked like on the outside. It was nothing like this. You had known that it would be different even as he’d brought you to his lips and yet there had been no way of knowing just how different it would be, and experiencing it has left you in a hollowed sense of awe. Life bursting all around you, the rush of blood beneath your fingertips. You can hear a steady pounding above you, and it sort of sounds like a heartbeat, but the timing is off—perhaps something about being inside a cavern is causing the sound to echo itself. The whooshing of his breath drowns out your own, but it brings about a steady calm, a reassurance, a promise to keep you safe. There are other noises too, soft in the background, the thrumming in his veins and the churning of his digestive processes beneath you. 

The walls of his stomach ripple idly around you, gently rocking you with their cool touch. Whenever the Doctor speaks, the soft flesh vibrates and his words swim around you, and you can feel it too when he swallows, tiny pulls of the muscles that he probably isn’t even aware of. The ridges and curves on the surface around you form patterns you can’t see, but the darkness isn’t unsettling, for this is the darkness in which nothing can hide. 

Once your senses have adjusted some, you ask the Doctor if he will take you back to your ship. You have little to repay him for doing so, but maybe what you have will be enough. Maybe there are other things you can do for him. You can pass on some information from the Teselecta’s data files, maybe provide him with some of the ship schematics you had access to. The act makes you uneasy; you’d worked hard to get even your limited position and breaking the law on a vigilante spaceship certainly came with its own risks. But you owe the Doctor your life, don’t you? Those are risks you have to take now. 

“Maybe.” He answers your question cryptically. “I could just keep you in there, you know.” 

You aren’t sure if it’s possible. The compression field isn’t indefinite but if he put maintenance work into it, he might be able to get it to last much longer than it was intended for. Could you even survive for that long inside of him? You don’t comment, not sure that you want to encourage this line of thought, lest it inspire him to try something out. 

“We could go on adventures together, you and me.” There’s a sort of wistfulness in his voice, and it raises questions regarding the attractiveness of the proposition to him. What would he even get out of it? Someone who was trapped inside of him, unable to experience the things he saw. Unable to leave. Is that what he wanted? Someone to talk to, someone who couldn’t run away? But he is dying, you remember. Whatever adventures he might have in mind, they probably wouldn’t last long. Maybe these are just the dreams of a dying man, the settling loneliness of the solitary grave. “You wouldn’t be able to see anything of course, but there are plenty of other things to do. I can think of at least four, and that’s without even trying.” 

You only-somewhat-jokingly ask him what he would do in that scenario if he got hungry, still feeling and presumably sounding a bit nervous about the idea. If you presented the challenges of it, maybe he’d reconsider. You’re grateful for the help he’s offered but this is the longest you’ve been away from your people and… well. No matter how comfortable it is inside the Doctor’s stomach, it is hardly a reasonable place to live.

“It’s much more likely I’d have to feed _you_ , but I’m sure I could remember.” There is a brief silence that follows. “Ah, I’m just messing with you; of course I’ll take you home.” He laughs lightly. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find. You lot have a long way to go as far as time travel technology is concerned.” 

You tell him where you think the Teselecta might be, although it is really only a starting point as you’d missed the call to action earlier. The Doctor listens to this, tells you that he has an idea, and then he starts walking. You can feel this only as a gentle sway; the muscles around you absorb most of the movement. You slowly lean back into the plushy flesh, sinking into the soft surface, and find yourself more and more tuned into the white noise around you. The steadiness of it is calming, and with your adrenaline draining away, there is suddenly nothing more tempting than a quick nap. Surely he wouldn’t notice; the conversation has stalled anyways.

Just as you are drifting off to sleep, the Doctor stops walking, and something begins pressing in at you from the outside. There are muffled thuds—fingers tapping against one wall of his stomach—prodding frantically at the area. You are frozen with confusion until you are jabbed right in the face, after which you make a startled noise and scramble away from the area. 

“Oh! Sorry.” He says, and the movement dulls. “You went a bit still there; just checking in.”

You apologize, stretching, your muscles creaking and popping as you did so. You hadn’t expected to be so comfortable in there and before you can help it you yawn, sinking back into the flesh. It doesn’t take long to fit back into the warm spot you’d made for yourself. You hadn’t meant to alarm him but to be honest… it is a little flattering that his first reaction had been worry. It’s a good sign as far as your future is concerned. 

“That’s alright.” When he chuckles his entire body rumbles around and it exudes an aura of safety. “I just got to my ship. It won’t be much longer.” The Doctor moves again and suddenly a strange warmness enters your head. It’s like something has wormed its way inside your skull, twisting its way between the folds of your brain. You squirm, limbs thrashing against the surfaces around you as the crawling sensation persists. “It’s ok.” His fingers return to his belly, pressing in on you again, gentler this time. They massage at you, attempting to soothe you and quell your writhing. “It’s just my ship; it won’t hurt you.” The uncomfortableness of it quickly fades but it is still in there, a warmth at the back of your mind that drips slowly down your spine. 

You can hear his ship now, which is strange considering you had not heard any environmental sounds before, and you wonder if it has to do with what has just happened to your head. There is a mechanical whirring, and a soft ticking, and some other noises you can’t identify. More instruments to the strange symphony. As your movement settles, his fingers remove themselves and somehow it feels like a great loss. Without meaning to you sigh, leaning more heavily into the spot where they’d once been. 

“You liked that, did you?” The Doctor says without missing a beat, the fingers returning and finding you, focusing in on your form. Sheepishly, you turn your back to the massage, allowing his hand to work at your tense muscles, not really wanting to admit how good it feels. It is an unusual circumstance, but you may as well make the best of it. You’ve already forgotten the strange sensation caused by the ship and your doubts about his intentions have clearly been proven unwarranted. The Doctor kneads at his stomach like that for a little while, before pulling away. “Let’s get you home. Hang on.”

The ship makes a loud _clunk_ and the Doctor lurches, and perhaps this means that his ship has gone into motion. You slide a bit inside his stomach, but he does an otherwise fine job at keeping himself steady for you. He begins humming a little to himself, seeming completely nonplussed about having a passenger in this manner. He’s eased into his traveling routine, and the normalcy of it is relaxing. Maybe that’s part of his plan. Or maybe—as was suggested after his initial examination of you—he thinks very little of you at all.


End file.
